The 24 Most Important Guinea Pigs

Here's your nightly math! Just 5 quick minutes of number fun for kids and parents at home. Read a cool fun fact, followed by math riddles at different levels so everyone can jump in. Your kids will love you for it.

The 24 Most Important Guinea Pigs

We have no idea how the Buzzfeed people picked “The 24 Most Important Guinea Pigs” shown here, but some pigs must have won just for being so fluffy. Abyssinians have slightly longer hair that sticks out in poofy spirals called “rosettes.” The rosettes are always symmetrical: 1 on each shoulder, 1 on each hip, 2-4 along their back, and 2 on the rump. Always! But guinea pigs can get even fluffier: Peruvians can grow hair longer than your hand! It gets combed out to the sides, making them look like you could mop the floor with them. That takes a lot of hair-brushing and hair-trimming, though. So as we see here, some guinea pigs would rather just dress up as dinosaurs.

Wee ones: How many guinea pigs do you see in the photos here all together?

Little kids: If an Abyssinian has 2 shoulder rosettes, 2 hip rosettes, 4 on its back and 2 on its butt, how many spirally fluffs does it have? Bonus: If that Peruvian guinea pig has 6-inch long hair and your hair is twice as long, how long is your hair?

Big kids: In the 24 photos, one picture actually shows 5 guinea pigs, and 3 other photos show 2 guinea pigs each, while the rest each show 1 guinea pig. How many important guinea pigs do we really have? Bonus: If guinea pig hair grows 1 inch every 2 months and the Peruvian starts with 2 inches in February, in what month does the hair reach 5 inches?

About the Author

Laura Bilodeau Overdeck is founder and president of Bedtime Math Foundation. Her goal is to make math as playful for kids as it was for her when she was a child. Her mom had Laura baking while still in diapers, and her dad had her using power tools at a very unsafe age, measuring lengths, widths and angles in the process. Armed with this early love of numbers, Laura went on to get a BA in astrophysics from Princeton University, and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business; she continues to star-gaze today. Laura’s other interests include her three lively children, chocolate, extreme vehicles, and Lego Mindstorms.